Last week I had the great opportunity to be at the WebRTC Conference & Expo. A lot of people there asked me what is it that I do at work. The answer? It isn’t WebRTC. It is Big Data. And then a few other things as well.

Big Data is big compared to WebRTC. In Atlanta, we had over 600 people. At Strata conference about Big Data 3 months ago? Over 2000. No match.

But there are some similarities. Specifically? Both bring nothing new to the table. Just a different way of thinking about the challenges, coupled with minor adjustments that flip the market.

Here are some truths about Big Data:

Big Data does LESS than your usual database. It even doesn’t have any decent SQL on top of it

Big Data is used by web companies more than any other vertical out there. It is where it started

Big Data relies on commodity hardware to build state of the art database

Big Data removes the barriers of delving into advanced analytics by any company

Big Data is based on open source technologies, with an ecosystem of vendors adding their proprietary stuff to it

Big Data changes the way companies are looking at data

Big Data created a whole new job classification: the “Data Scientist”

Here are some truths about WebRTC:

WebRTC does LESS than your usual VoIP technology. It event doesn’t have signaling or the common codecs that are out there

UC vendors are ignoring WebRTC. WebRTC is used by web companies today to build their use cases

WebRTC relies on commodity software (=browser) to build state of the art communication

WebRTC removes the barriers of delving into real time communication by any company

WebRTC is based on open source technologies, with an ecosystem of vendors adding building blocks around it

WebRTC changes the way companies are looking at VoIP

Will WebRTC create a new job classification? The “RTC Web Developer”

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Hmm… To me it seems that WebRTC to VoIP is like Big Data to Database technology.

And we can at least agree that Big Data is Big Business these days. If you ask me, WebRTC will take the same route. Who’s going to join the ride?